Commentary

Elliot never should have expected a fork to work. He’s fighting a big slime monster! It’s just common sense to use spoon.

Here’s a completely and totally shocking fact: As a young man, I was influenced by anime! And I wanted to learn Japanese! I, uh, still think it would be sorta cool to learn it, but I totally didn’t. I mostly remember how to say “watashi wa nihongo ga wakarimasen”, or “I don’t understand Japanese”. My pronunciation of it is really good, though!

But yeah, there are a few “I studied basic Japanese and thought it was cool” moments early in this comic. I’d be more embarrassed by this, but it’s simple fact that foreign languages can sound exotic and cool to people. While I was getting overly excited about Japanese words over here, someone in Japan was simultaneously buying a t-shirt with some random English word on it.

Still would seriously like to learn Japanese someday. It wouldn’t be of much use to me beyond being not needing subtitles or dubbing for anime, but I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t enough to make me feel it might be worth the effort.

All that said, I think it’s an appropriate character trait for Elliot. He likes fighting anime, and he’d be going through a similar faze. It still gets to make me feel a little self conscious, however, because I know that was totally me at one point.